My Games of 2008 - Braid: my uncouthness laid bare.

Braid is the subject of much bile and praise, and after playing and finishing it it's very difficult to feel where I stand on the game. Essentially a puzzle platformer with a very interesting mechanic Braid follows the story of Tim and his quest to find his princess who, using the classic videogame convention, is always in another castle. Or so it seems , but we'll get back to this. You traverse the screens, using a very cool time reversing mechanic to make the enemies, platforms and switches move in reverse to solve the platforming conundrums and collect the jigsaw puzzle to progress the story. Of course, reversing time mechanics aren't new but here it lets you reverse to the very beginning of the level as opposed to a limited amount of time. Throughout the game you use this to different effects, sometimes combined with environmental quirks or items like a ring (slows time in a local radius), objects encased in a green glow (negating any time reversing effects), and one part where you get a shadow who performs actions you've just done to help you get further along. To be honest, trying to explain all this is making my head hurt, but it's all pretty spiffy. The graphics are lovely, well animated, have beautiful backgrounds and the music is of a similar standard. A lot of love has gone into the game and it really does show. So you traverse these beautiful levels, most of which you get to the end and go "Aaaaah, clever" and move onto the next and progress the story that seems to be about abduction, princesses, castles and Tim. Except...

Right, I'll be the first to admit I'm not the brightest bulb and that anything that has even a vague subtle subtext usually tends to pass me by, but the only phrase I can think of when people start talking about the story behind Braid is "fucking poncey". To me, the story is about some dude who sounds like a bit of a fucking tool who was seeing some woman who also sounds like a bit of a fucking tool, he was too clingy but not attentive enough to her needs and then made a mistake, and she sounds borderline obsessive and needy so she pisses off and this game is some journey to win her back. Or something. It sounds fucking emo just putting it that simply, but when you read the books that are just before the worlds and look at the pictures the puzzles make, it throws all sorts of vague bollocks in the works that try and imply different things. I had a quick squint at some of the theories behind the meaning of the story, and some think it's to do with the development of the atomic bomb, which just baffles me because I don't think that deep. There's pages of discussion on this but I've tried to stay away from it to try and give my impression of it all. I'm not fussed about this, truth be told. I enjoyed Braid up till the last world when some precise time manipulation made me stop playing for a while because it annoyed the hell out of me, but as it turns out I was only like 3 screens from the end so I finished it eventually only to be confronted by a very open ended ending and a feeling that I've been ripped off somehow.

But, and there's always a but, regardless of the surrounding bollockry, the intellectual trappings, the desire to give video gaming some kind of literate credibility the game left an impression on me. It left an impression of hopelessness, melancholy, isolation and general downbeatness but also something warm and fuzzy. I mean, it is a wonderful looking and sounding game so that probably had something to do with it. There's just something that grates with me about this game, which I think comes from the very small Neanderthal side of me which doesn't want all this clap trap surrounding the game. If I want something that's going to make me think and have sub-texts and hidden meanings I'll read a book, I don't play videogames to be intellectually provoked. I play them to give me satisfaction in some form, or to generally blow shit up, or send cars sideways around corners at 250mph so all I usually require is a plot that makes me utter "cool" or "what the fuck?" once in a while. The game itself is a very fun platformer that suffers from the occasional frustrating bit, and for that I suppose it was worth the points. That's not really to say elaborate plots don't have a place in videogames, it's just I personally don't have much time or inclination for them.